For LeBron and Us, "It's About Damn Time"

"It’s about damn time." LeBron’s win-line cut both ways, simultaneously a statement of relief, entitlement, and pure fact. In short, it was quintessential LeBron James, in the same way that Kevin Garnett’s primal yowl and Ron Artest’s ode to Queensbridge and his therapist captured what was, for them, the outward result of whatever goes through one’s head minutes after winning an NBA title.

But LeBron’s didn’t come in that first, hopefully iconic, interview on the court. That was reserved for awkward questions about Cleveland and James stumbled, paused, and demurred his way through a potential minefield. Variations on a familiar theme, it would have been easy for him to tell Dan Gilbert to go fly a kite, or return to last year’s aristocratic dismissal of the city and its concerns. Instead, we got a drift of half-answers and garbled lexicon. As Kevin Durant wept on his mother’s shoulder in the tunnel, then shot a glare at the camera when it intruded, LeBron was forced to confront the thorniest, most artificial part of his narrative in what should have been a time for celebration and redemption. I am not sure which was more painful to watch.

The trick with LeBron James is that he’s never been about one single story. There was the phenom, the dominator, seemingly predestined to rule the league. There was the King James presumption that came with this notion. There was the unwillingness to take over games late that, depending on who you asked, branded him a choker, a reluctant superstar, or a shining example of unselfish hoops. He was denied other talent in Cleveland through front office incompetence; when he went to Miami, James was seen as running from his own abilities and seeking solace in Wade and Bosh. "The Decision" was near-revolutionary, from a structural standpoint. It was also a crappy bit of PR, another recurrent problem, and an act that challenged definitions of loyalty, roots, and what it took to call an athlete a "traitor."

There have always been two, polarizing sides to James at any given juncture. What became apparent over the last few weeks, as we faced the possibility of James finally getting that title, was that LeBron has also failed to streamline his career story, that most crucial ingredient of post-Jordan branding. Fighting over LeBron James will always be difficult because no one can quite settle what to fight over.

"It’s about damn time" was, in a sense, ill-advised, suggesting that it had just been a matter of time. My wife grimaced when he said it. And through a certain lens, sure, it advertised a lack of humility that’s in step with a lot of the least flattering views of LeBron James. You could say the same thing about the Nike ad that aired immediately after the game; James and those invested in him figured this was coming. The only question was when. Faith was never a challenge, skepticism never entered the picture, and James won in the end because he was always supposed to.

What I heard, though, was that phrase reflected back on himself. When Wade spoke to the crowd, he mentioned the "embarrassment and shame" the team had felt after last year’s Finals. It wasn’t that this team felt they deserved a title or didn’t want to have to work for it. Rather, they came together to win; they were singularly engineered for this purpose. Not being able to follow through was a slap in the face and perhaps a wake-up call. I don’t suggest we feel bad for LeBron James, but he has always been in that Heat-like predicament. The pressure on him from the outset has been RINGS RINGS RINGS. "It’s about damn time." He never publicly ran from this responsibility, at least not explicitly, and now he has finally gotten out from under a burden he willingly accepted.

Then again, James could very easily have been talking about all of us. As Kevin Arnovitz pointed out, this win hopefully signals a shift away from tabloid-style coverage of LeBron, the Heat, and anything creeping near them, and a return to basketball itself. James, great as he is, may never rule the roost in the absolutely way that Jordan did. It’s a bygone, centralized vision of how sports work. There’s too much information, too many teams accessible via broadcast, and plenty of great competition to offer up counter-arguments, if not unmask James (we’re past that, I hope.) But if there’s anything to my quasi-theological treatment of the LeBron James Problem earlier this week, we’re now being ushered into that era where blood and death are replaced by a thousand years of peace. In this case, that means the Heat and Thunder facing off every June for the next eight years.

Basketball is as good as its been since Jordan retired the second time. LeBron James, no longer the boogeyman, is on track to assume his place among the all-timers and frankly, worn out as sports shouting material. We’ve grafted so much onto him, crossed so many wires and overlapped so many demands, that we’ve lost sight of the real tension at play in his career. And, really, the timing couldn’t be better, since we’ve all just about mad out on LeBron hysteria, at least those of us interested in James and not a shell we can affix our rancor to. There’s still Obama for that, anyway. And Chris Bosh ... what a jerk!

"It’s about damn time." It’s hard to ever really feel like LeBron has found redemption like Garnett or Artest did, or even Kobe Bryant with his post-Shaq title. James did what he was sent to Earth to do. It wasn’t as straightforward as expected and in many ways, resembled a bildungsroman more than a super hero arc. James isn’t straightforward and never will be. We may never know exactly what to make of him. He may never make it particularly easy to boil down his entire career to a single narrative thread. But that’s not a bad thing. LeBron James contain multitudes. We’re just along for the ride. Finally, we can take it guilt-free, or without feeling obliged to listen to the dead-enders who maintain that James is a sniveling, overrated fraud.

"It’s about damn time." LeBron’s title means we can at very least embrace him as a basketball player, which really, was always his most accessible quality. The hype and mythology surrounding him took on a life of his own. We’ve gotten back to that first game, to that smiling kid who made us gasp every time up the court. "It’s about damn time." Welcome back, LeBron.

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